The life and times of Goya - Part two. The descent into darkness

In the second part of his article Alan Woods deals with the profound
changes in Goya's paintings in his later years.The Peninsular War transformed
the whole situation in Spain overnight - and with it, Goya's art. In place of the sunlight there was darkness,
instead of colour, only different shades of black. This impenetrable darkness was
only an expression of the all-pervading blackness he saw all around him. The
reason for this astonishing transformation cannot be found in art. It is a
direct reflection of the processes at work in society.

The Peninsular War (1808 - 14) was the first example in relatively modern
times of what we call a guerrilla war (indeed the term was invented by the
Spaniards, meaning a "little war"). The early attempts of the Spanish army
to fight the French on their own terms led to a complete failure. But the
guerrilla war was another matter. The Spanish countryside, with its rugged
mountains and mesetas, is perfect for this kind of partisan warfare, and
it is part of the Spanish tradition. Guerrilla leaders included priests,
noblemen and smugglers. They fought not only against the French but also against
the Josefinos - those Spaniards who collaborated with Joseph Bonaparte.
The conflict therefore took on the aspect of a civil war within a war. This gave
it an especially ferocious character.

"It was", wrote the Abbé de Pradt, "neither hostile battles nor
engagements which exhausted the French forces, but the incessant molestations of
an invisible enemy who, if pursued, became lost among the people, out of which
he reappeared immediately afterward with renewed strength. The lion in the fable
tormented to death by a gnat gives a true picture of the French army."

These words are equally applicable to the situation faced by all armies of
foreign occupation when confronted by a guerrilla war backed by the whole
population, including the US forces in Iraq today. Just like the American army,
the French army of that time was the most formidable military force in the
world. Yet it was finally defeated - tormented to death by a gnat, as the
eyewitness points out. The guerrilla forces would stage a hit-and-run raid, and
then melt away into the population, as Marx explains:

"As soon as the enterprise was completed, everybody went his own way, and
armed men were seen scattering in all directions: but the associated peasants
quietly returned to their common occupation 'without so much as their absence
having been noticed'. Thus the communication on all roads was closed.
Thousands of enemies were on the spot, though not one could be discovered. No
courier could be dispatched without being taken; no supplies could set out
without being intercepted; in short, no movement could be effected without being
observed by a hundred eyes. At the same time, there existed no means of striking
at the root of a combination of this kind. The French were obliged to be
constantly armed against an enemy who, continuously flying, always reappeared,
and was everywhere without being actually seen, the mountain serving as so many
curtains." (Marx, op. cit., p. 421.)

Wars in Spain - and especially civil wars - have always been accompanied
by the most ferocious cruelty and fanaticism. The long wars between Christians
and Moors that lasted hundreds of years injected a note of religious fanaticism
into these conflicts that established a tradition that outlived its original
causes. The Peninsular War was characterised by extreme brutality. The civilian
population suffered most. In this long and bloody conflict, which in many
respects resembles the war in Vietnam. There was no such thing as a
non-combatant: men, women and children, young and old, were all involved.
Atrocities were the norm. Nobody was spared. The bestiality of this war is
conveyed by the following description of the scene after the fall of Badajoz:

Dog Trapped in Quicksand

"Badajoz was a terrible place after that night. Edward Costello of the 95th
remembered: 'The shouts and oaths of drunken soldiers in quest of more liquor,
the reports of fire-arms and the crashing in of doors, together with the
appalling shrieks of hapless women, might have induced anyone to believe himself
in the regions of the damned.' Private John Spencer Cooper of the 7th
Fusiliers admitted that: 'All orders ceased. Plunder was the order of the
night. Some got loaded with plate, etc.; then beastly drunk; and lastly, were
robbed by others. This lasted until the second day after.' Lieutenant William
Grattan was equally shocked by men who would fall 'upon the already too deeply
injured females, and tear from them the trinkets that adorned their necks,
fingers or ears! And finally, they would strip them of their wearing apparel […]
Many men were flogged, but although the contrary has been said, none were hanged
- yet hundreds deserved it." (R. Holmes, Wellington, the Iron Duke,
p. 161.)

It is well to remember that these atrocities were perpetrated against the
Spanish people by British troops - who were supposed to have been sent
to Spain to "liberate" Spain from Napoleon. This will sound like a very
familiar story to the people of Iraq today. The atrocities carried out by the
French against the Spanish, and by the Spanish against the French were even
worse:

"One French officer saw a hospital in which 400 men had been hacked to
pieces and 53 buried alive, and on another occasion a single French soldier was
left alive, although with his ears cuts off, to testify to the murder and
mutilation of 1,200 of his wounded comrades: the experience drove him mad."
(Ibid., p. 105.)

This was the terrible reality that Goya portrayed in his black and white
sequence The Disasters of War, (Los Desastres de la Guerra - seeGallery). In
this remarkable series, we see scenes of unimaginable inhumanity, of frightful
brutality and unspeakable cruelty, of torture, killing and rape. Although it is
unlikely that Goya witnessed these things himself (he would scarcely have got
away alive!) he must have based himself on reports. In any case, war is
presented here as unrelieved horror, with no attempt made to sanitise or
prettify it. This compares very favourably with the way the war in Iraq was
presented to the world recently.

Overnight the whole situation was transformed - and with it, Goya's art.
Gone were the scenes of harmless enjoyment under cloudless skies. Instead a long
nightmare reigned in which men became wild beasts and everything human was
banished, all light extinguished. In place of the sunlight there was darkness,
instead of colour, only different shades of black. The impenetrable darkness
that is the main characteristic of Goya's paintings in his later years was
only an expression of the all-pervading blackness he saw all around him. The
reason for this astonishing transformation cannot be found in art. It is a
direct reflection of the processes at work in society.

The Peninsular war ended with the expulsion of the French army from Spain,
but the horrors did not end with the return of Ferdinand VII to Madrid after the
withdrawal of the French. Here we have a colossal paradox. The cowardly and
degenerate Bourbons did nothing to save their country. The war against France
only succeeded to the degree that it was taken out of the hands of the monarchy
and the nobility and became a people's war. But the understanding of the
peasant masses was primitive. In their confused minds the national resistance
movement was identified with "their" king and "their" Church. As Marx
put it:

"The King appeared in the imagination of the people in the light of a
romantic prince, forcibly abused and locked up by a giant robber. The most
fascinating and popular epochs of the past were encircled with the holy and
miraculous traditions of the war of the cross against the crescent; and a great
portion of the lower classes were accustomed to wear the livery of mendicants
and live upon the sanctified patrimony of the Church." (Marx, op. cit., p.
403.)

The contradictions that remained hidden when Spaniard was pitched against
Frenchman now came to the surface with explosive consequences. Many educated
Spaniards - including Goya - hoped that somehow the end of the war would
bring improvements to the political regime. Although they were prepared to fight
to expel the French army from Spanish soil, these patriots were not against
French political ideals. They looked to the French revolution for their
inspiration. In an address of the Central Junta in Seville, dated October 28, 1809 we read:

"An imbecile and decrepit despotism prepared the way for French tyranny. To
leave the state sunk in the old abuses would be a crime as enormous as to
deliver you into the hands of Bonaparte."

But these ideals were not shared by everyone. Ferdinand and the reactionary
court clique had no intention of sharing power, and they had powerful backers in
the Church and the backward, politically ignorant peasant masses who hated
everything French. After the battle of Bailen, the French were forced onto the
defensive. Joseph fled from Madrid to Burgos. The revolution advanced to its
high point. Simultaneously, the high nobility that had capitulated to Bonaparte
judged it prudent to sneak back into the "patriotic camp" and await the
return of the Bourbons to settle accounts with the liberals. The collapse of the
central authority led to the emergence of local revolutionary committees or juntas,
to use the Spanish word for them. In many of these juntas the liberals and
revolutionaries predominated - progressive lawyers, teachers and students who
longed for change.

In 1812 the tide began to flow strongly in the direction of reform: the
Constitution of Cadiz was approved. In 1812 the Constitution became a cause and
a banner for which men and women would later fight and die. But the debates on
the Constitution quickly revealed a deep cleavage in the nation between the
reformers and the conservatives - the liberales and serviles, as
they became popularly known. The people of Madrid rose repeatedly against the
army with the cry: "Viva Riego! Viva la Constitución!" In this heated
atmosphere there was the beginning of a literary revival, led by writers like
Larra, dramatists like Duque de Rivas and poets like Espronceda.

The liberal renaissance clashed head-on with the conservative forces of
reaction. Goya sided with the liberals. The reactionary scoundrel Ferdinand
refused to sign the liberal Constitution. His return meant the return of
reaction and obscurantism. With the aid of the Holy Alliance, absolutism was
restored in Spain. "The king's person is sacred and inviolable, and is not
subject to responsibility," states the document that proclaimed him king.
There was constant friction between the king and the Cortes (parliament). It
came to a head in 1813 over the proclamation of a decree suppressing the
Inquisition. The reactionary and fanatical clergy stirred up the ignorant masses
against the reformers. A period of black reaction followed.

As always happens, those reactionary rulers who behave like cowards in the
face of powerful enemies show themselves to be the most ruthless oppressors of
their own people when they have the chance. Ferdinand behaved like a snivelling
coward who cringed before Napoleon and even congratulated the French on their
victories in Spain, now launched a ferocious campaign of repression against the
Spanish Liberals. In a single decree he sentenced 12,000 of his countrymen to
perpetual banishment. He conveniently "forgot" his promise to reconvene the
Cortes, introduced strict censorship of the press and set in motion a whole army
of spies and informers. Crowds of fanatical royalists crying "Death to Liberty
and the Constitution" went on the rampage.

Ferdinand rescinded all the decisions of the Cortes. He re-established the
Inquisition and recalled the Jesuits who had been banished by his grandfather.
The death penalty was decreed for anyone who dared to support the Constitution
or the suppression of the Inquisition. Liberals were hounded, persecuted and
imprisoned. Prominent members of the Cortes were sent to the galleys or African
prisons. Many liberal officers left for America. Finally, the most famous
guerrilla leaders, Porlier and de Lacy, were sentenced to be shot.

"The reign of privilege and abuse had returned, even to the
re-establishment of the seignorial jurisdiction over thousands of towns and
villages […] The next six years were among the blackest in the history of
Spain. Ferdinand, the most contemptible monarch ever to occupy her throne,
turned back the clock not to the eighteenth but to the seventeenth century, to
the worst days of Philip IV." (W.A. Atkinson, A History of Spain and
Portugal, p 268.)

Goya was a true son of the 18th century Enlightenment. He consistently
opposed the backward, reactionary obscurantism that characterised Spanish social
life and politics, and gave this an expression in his art. He looked forward to
an enlightened Spain that would finally consign to the dustbin of history all
the medieval and feudal rubbish and enter firmly on the road of progress.

In fact, the spirit of freedom was not dead in Spain but only driven
underground. Secret societies, including the freemasonry, flourished, organising
patriotic conspiracies. Within four months of Ferdinand's return to the
throne, the flag of revolt was raised in Pamplona. The insurgents demanded the
Constitution of 1812. Another attempt was made in Corunna in 1815. A plot
against Ferdinand himself was uncovered in Madrid in 1816. The following year
there was another attempt in Valencia. They all failed and many paid with their
life. But finally, on January 1st 1820 a military commander - Don Rafael de
Riego - raised the cry for the Constitution and found an echo among the people
and the army. The first pronunciamiento had commenced.

Ferdinand felt the ground shift under his feet. News was coming in of
uprisings all over Spain: Corunna, Oviedo, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Valencia,
Pamplona. But the success of the rising was only guaranteed by the action of the
masses. The people of Madrid seized the palace. The king only managed to save
himself by re-establishing the ayuntamiento (the democratic council of
the people of Madrid). With typical Bourbon cunning, he capitulated and agreed
to swear the Constitution: "Let us walk frankly, and I the first, along the
constitutional path," ran his manifesto in the official Gazette.

The revolution had triumphed. The prisons were opened. The political refugees
were recalled. The king had sworn the Constitution. But in practice, this was
merely a rotten subterfuge. Fernando never had any problem about swearing oaths,
since he possessed a royal Confessor who would always grant him absolution.
Behind the scenes the king was intriguing, helped by divisions and splits in the
ranks of the Liberals, who polarised between right and left. Riego was removed
by trickery and many patriotic societies were dissolved.

Finally, the forces of reaction in Spain were reinforced by the French king
Louis XVIII, who sent an army of 100,000 into Spain, following an ultimatum by
the Holy Alliance in January 1823. The Liberal triennium was over. Restored to
absolute power, Ferdinand took his revenge on his opponents. All the promises
were torn up and a reign of terror unleashed that lasted for all the three
years, six months and twenty days of his "most ignominious slavery".
Thousands fled into exile. Riego was hanged and quartered. Hundreds of others
went to the gallows and were subjected to such barbarous treatment that even the
Holy Alliance powers protested in horror.

The work of the young Goya stands in complete contrast with that of his old
age. It is as if we are in the presence of two different artists, or two
different worlds. Take for example the two very different versions of the same
subject, the festival of San Isidro, the patron saint of Madrid. The first
picture of San Isidro shows a picnic on the banks of the river Manzanares (see
Gallery). It
is still in the French style, showing the influence of Bayeau and Mengs. Here we
have a carefree scene of young people enjoying themselves on a holiday. All is
sunlight and colour - young ladies with parasols and their young male admirers
in dashing attire, the majos and majas.

Thirty years later he returned to the same theme, in The pilgrimage to San
Isidro (La peregrinación a San Isidro - see Gallery) - but what a difference! This
is another world - a world of darkness and black shadows, peopled by monsters,
whores, witches, corrupt priests, murderers and crippled beggars. They creep
forward in a winding, sinister procession, like some monstrous snake. The
landscape is desolate and grim. There is not a single wholesome element present
here. There is no God, no Redeemer. It is a picture of grim, unrelieved
darkness, but it is not a fantasy. The faces are distorted out of all
recognition. They are the faces of lunatics and hysterics, irrational, macabre
and threatening. Here is a picture of the reality of Spain overrun by the forces
of obscurantist reaction after 1812.

Saturn devouring his Son

In reality we are in the presence of both a different artist and a different
world. It is a vision of a world torn apart by years of war and revolution, a
world that has been stood on its head. And it is a vision of old age, of a man
who has witnessed too much human suffering and has no idea how it will all end.
It is a bleak and pessimistic vision of reality. By now Goya was old and
profoundly deaf. The sensation of isolation that deafness brings must have
further deepened his depression. These last paintings - his greatest
masterpieces - were painted not for sale or even for public display. He
painted them for himself on the walls of his house. They are an expression of
the anguish in the depths of his soul. It is also the expression of the
suffering of a whole people.

Here we find no happy faces and laughter, but only the half-crazed face of an
ancient crone with her croaking, humourless cackle. The darkness has penetrated
the minds and souls of these people, who have no human attributes about them.
Here we have Two Old Men, in which the main figure is a decrepit old man,
his face contorted and agitated, with a demon whispering in his ear. On the
other hand there is Two Grinning Women and a Man, which has an even more
nightmarish feeling about it.

In the painting known as Destiny (see Gallery) the Fates appear as macabre old
hags. They are hovering in the air, supporting the bound figure of a man. One of
these grotesque witches is clutching a small figure. The second examines the
figure through a magnifying glass, while the third holds a pair of scissors, as
she prepares to cut through the fragile thread of human life. Destiny, or Fate,
is often depicted as blind. It expresses the apparently fortuitous nature of
events that seem to have no rational explanation. On closer inspection events
that seem to be ruled by no law but accident actually can be explained in a
rational fashion. The tragedy of most men and women is that they have no
conception of the forces that dominate their lives and are therefore the passive
victims of history, rather than conscious agents that strive to understand
society and fight to change it.

In the words of Hegel, "Necessity is blind only insofar as it is not
understood." But the same Hegel also wrote: "Reason becomes unreason".
There are periods in history when the old society is breaking down, when all its
laws, morality and religion no longer correspond to the objective necessity of
the new period. Beginning with the most conscious and revolutionary layers,
people feel discontented with the old ideas, but at first have no clear idea of
how to replace them. Moreover, the old order refuses to die but fights
stubbornly to maintain itself. The struggle of the old against the new, the
living against the dead, can be long drawn out in time, producing convulsions on
a vast scale. If people do not understand the reason for these convulsions, that
they are only the birth-pangs of a new order, they will inevitably draw
pessimistic and despairing conclusions.

Goya painted the world as he saw it - and he painted it with a fearless
honesty. It was not his fault that the existing social order had outlived its
usefulness and become a fetter on progress. In such periods, what once seemed
rational and just becomes irrational and unjust. In such periods the minds of
men and women fall prey to mysticism and superstition. Irrational tendencies
flourish - just as they do today. Some people thought that Goya was mad. He
was not mad, but he faithfully described the madness that he saw around him.

The supply of horrors seems unending. Here two old crones are slurping soup
(see Gallery).
Here are two men thrashing each other blindly with clubs as they both sink into
a bog or quicksand (see Gallery). Here is Saturn devouring his own children in a bloody and
unnatural cannibal repast (see Gallery). The face of Saturn, with its crazed expression,
would have been disturbing enough. But to add to the horror we are shown the
body of a half-eaten child, its head already devoured and the rest of its
mutilated body dripping with blood. For sheer horror, this painting probably has
no equal in the history of art. It is possible to paint a picture of horror
with the intention of merely shocking people. The art of our own epoch is full
of such sensationalism. But Goya's depiction of horror is not only intended to
shock. It contains a powerful message about a world where men and women behave
towards each other like cannibals, exploiting, robbing and killing.

One of the most disturbing images of this later art is the picture of a dog
drowning in quicksand (see Gallery). The animal is being swept along helplessly on a huge
wave, the colour of which is a dirty yellowish brown - the colour of vomit.
This violent and at the same time pathetic image expresses better than anything
else the feeling of impotent futility of a nation swept to its doom by forces it
does not control and cannot understand. Ironically, the face of the dog, with
its pitiful expression, is far more human than any of the faces of the human
beings in these late paintings (see Gallery). This pathetic creature represents the fate of
the whole Spanish people, and of Goya himself.

The
Sleep of Reason produces Monsters

There is an etching by Goya, produced more than a decade earlier, that
vividly anticipates his mood at this time. It is one of the Caprices called The
Sleep of Reason produces Monsters. It depicts a man sitting at his desk in
the darkness, clutching his head in an obviously disturbed sleep. He is
surrounded by nightmarish creatures - owls, bats cats and the like, that loom
out of the shadows to attack him. The message of this powerful etching is like a
manifesto of the Enlightenment. When human reason sleeps, the dark forces emerge
and threaten to engulf society. This is Goya's nightmare - but it is not a
private nightmare but a social message.

This remarkable etching was an accurate anticipation of life itself. In the
period of black reaction that followed the second restoration of the Spanish
Bourbons, Spain was thrust back into the dark night of obscurantism. Ferdinand's
hatred of freedom and progress was well expressed in the loyal address to the
crown of the university of Cervera, which begins "Far from us the dangerous
novelty of thinking". Yet even these tame universities were closed for the
last two years of the reign, while a "Society of Exterminating Angels" gave
full scope to the fanaticism and bigotry of the clergy who now ruled the roost.
Spain was living through a nightmare in which the forces of progress (Reason)
were being swamped in a dirty morass of reaction, ignorance, superstition and
fanaticism.

In 1824 Goya left Spain, following his own phrase: "If you can't put out
a fire in your own house, get out of it." Just as Picasso never returned to
Spain under the Franco dictatorship, so Goya ended his days in exile in France,
where he died in 1828 - just two years before the July Revolution of 1830. He
was 82 years of age and could not speak a word of French. Alone and deaf, cut
off from the world, he continued painting to the very end, and he wrote on one
of his last paintings the phrase "aún aprendo" - "still learning".

Of all the artists of the 18th and 19th century Goya is the most contemporary
- the one who has most to say to us. If it is the task of great art to look
below the surface manifestations and lay bare the reality that lies beneath,
then this is truly great art. For beneath the thin layer of civilization lie
dark forces - forces of ignorance and barbarism - which at critical moments
in history can escape their leash and threaten the very fabric of human
civilization. This is true, not only for Goya's epoch but for our own also.
This art is an accurate picture of our own world - the world of the first
decade of the 21st century.

Why do we find these disturbing images so familiar? In Goya's time, the old
feudal order was falling into decay everywhere. Above all in Spain it had
outlived its usefulness and become a terrible obstacle in the way of progress.
This obstacle had to be removed by revolutionary means if Spain was to advance.
At that time, all that was best in Spanish society - all that was alive,
honest, intelligent and noble - was fighting to replace the rotten regime of
feudal absolutism with a new society. Capitalism at that time signified
progress.

But two centuries have passed since then. Capitalism has passed through its
adolescence and youth. It has developed the productive forces to an unheard-of
extent and thereby fulfilled its progressive historical function. But for the
best part of the last hundred years it has given up that role. Having divided
the whole world up among a handful of imperialist powers and gigantic
monopolies, it is now reduced to a permanent struggle for markets, sources of
raw materials and spheres of influence. The means of production stagnate,
unemployment increases, and there is one war after another.

Lenin once said, capitalism is horror without end. The horrors that
stare at us from the canvases in the Prado are nothing to those that are
reproduced every day on a colossal scale by the crisis of capitalism in the
period of its senile decay. Millions starve to death while a handful of wealthy
parasites satiate their appetite for surplus value on the blood of little
children. Compared to this, Goya's Saturn seems like an innocuous old man. The
impasse of the means of production produces monstrosities even worse than those
depicted in The Disasters of War. In the Congo alone in the past three
years, at least four and a half million people have been slaughtered, while the "civilised"
world community looks the other way. Children are recruited for the purpose of
murder and walk around the streets with human bones for ornaments. Such
convulsions are inflicted on a potentially wealthy land by the world crisis of
capitalism.

It is in the nature of art that is truly great that it does not grow old and
is still able to reveal profound truths to us centuries after it was first
created. The paintings of Goya's last and greatest period say more to us now,
after the experience of the horrors of the last century, than they said to Goya's
contemporaries. And just as in Goya's time all the living forces in society
united in a revolutionary struggle against feudal absolutism, so today all those
who wish to defend culture must unite with the working class in the
revolutionary struggle against the new absolutism that seeks to subject the
whole world to the dictatorship of Capital.

The purpose of great art is not to entertain, not only to depict in a
superficial and neutral manner but to penetrate beneath the surface and expose
the reality that lies beneath. In order to describe our own crazy capitalist
jungle, this ugly and irrational dog-eat-dog world, we would need someone with
the talent and passionate conviction of Goya. What a pity we do not have an
artist of such genius in our own times! The organic crisis of capitalism is
threatening the future of civilization and culture. But there are always
courageous voices that will protest against the prevailing barbarity.

The present epoch is the most turbulent and convulsive in history. This is
only a reflection of the fact that capitalism has outlived its historical
usefulness. Sooner or later it must leave the stage of history and make way for
a new and higher form of society - socialism. Out of the present convulsions a
new culture will emerge. Artists and writers will understand that their place is
to fight shoulder to shoulder with the working class for the socialist
reconstruction of society. The revolutionary events that impend will provide
ample material for the new generation of progressive artists. They will
naturally take as their starting point the marvellous work of this great Spanish
artist.